ØXN

SOLD OUT.

ØXN [pron. ox-en], comprising Radie Peat, Katie Kim, John ‘Spud’ Murphy and Eleanor Myler, will play their biggest live show at Vicar Street, Dublin on Thursday 29th, February, presented by Enthusiastic Eunuch and Foggy Notions.

ØXN's debut album CYRM [pron. sy-rum] was released in October 2023 to great acclaim.

"A modern masterpiece from Irish neofolk supergroup." - The Irish Times *****

"Irish folk debut full of unsettling dark magic." - The Guardian *****

CYRM is a six track album, just over 45 minutes in total length, featuring four original songs written by Radie Peat, Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler and John Murphy (‘Cruel Mother’, ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’, ‘Love Henry’ and ‘The Feast’) and two covers (‘The Wife of Michael Cleary’ by Maija Sofia and ‘Farmer in the City’ by Scott Walker).

The first signing to Ireland’s iconic label Claddagh Records in 18 years, ØXN is rooted in story; The band digs deep into the earth and retrieves evocative tales of love, loss, longing, revenge and ritual. Add to that the other-worldly sonic textures that beckon you to peer behind the curtain, with your heart in your mouth, and you might get close to anticipating the music that ØXN has created.

ØXN exist at the uncharted intersection of its constituent parts, melding Lankum’s experimental doom folk (Radie Peat), the motorik euphoria of Percolator (John ‘Spud’ Murphy and Eleanor Myler) and Katie Kim’s glorious Lynchian meta-verse. Try to imagine the missing link between Enya, Ennio Morricone, Richard Dawson and Neu! and add a pinch of something you never thought of and you’ll start to have a sense of this gloriously unique sonic universe which they inhabit.

What began as a side project duo between Radie Peat and Katie Kim in 2018 blossomed into a full-on, multi-textured tapestry with the addition of Myler and Murphy during lockdown. This resulted in one of the streaming highlights of the Covid era - an unforgettable live performance from a Martello tower in Dublin in conjunction with visual artist and Lankum collaborator, Vicky Langan.

ØXN take their literal name from the draft animal. Oxen are not a breed of cattle but rather steers – adult, male bovines that have been castrated. Something about the story of the beasts appealed to the band: Castrated, pulling heavy machinery; out to slog, or an interred beast for milking, since about 4000 BC. Sometimes worshipped, sometimes doomed for domestication.

Like Claddagh Records’ founder Garech Browne, with his own rich and storied past, ØXN is a band made up of people whose primary expression comes through music above personality, above aesthetic, above all else. This need to tell stories through evocative sounds that are enough to stop you dead in your tracks is the twine that binds Claddagh Records artists together. So it’s fitting that ØXN lead the charge as the label enters a new era that will see these stories reach farther than ever before, following the signing of a worldwide licensing agreement with Universal Music Ireland in 2020.